Steve Smith went past Don Bradman with his 30th Test century on Thursday, but admitted to being uncertain about how long his career will continue.

The former captain though is not in doubt for their next month’s tour of India or the Ashes that will follow. He said he was taking his career in small stages now.

“I don’t know, we’ll see,” he said when asked about his future. “I’m enjoying it at the moment. I really can’t say how long I’ll play for, I’m not sure.

“Take it one tour at a time, enjoy it, enjoy training and trying to get better. Whilst I’m doing that I’m happy playing, but don’t know how long it will last.”

Smith said he was trying to help the next generation of batters develop their games.

“It’s trying to get better, help the team win games of cricket,” he said. “Think we’ve played some really good cricket the last 12 months… we’ve got two really big hurdles in front of us with India and the Ashes. For me, it is trying to get better and trying to help some of the other batters coming through.

“I still try to help Marnus (Labuschagne) as much as possible, (Travis) Head, Cameron Green, Matty Renshaw, Marcus Harris… try to impart as much knowledge of conditions and ways to go about. If I can say something and you see that lightbulb go on and someone figures something out I get a big thrill out of that.”

Smith’s century here though was not an entirely fluent affair and struggled to 12 runs after 55 balls.

“It’s not going to be perfect every time,” he said. “So when you aren’t feeling as good as you’d like you just try to grind it out, get through that initial period then hopefully things get easier. I didn’t feel great my first 60-70 balls, I reckon, then things started to click and feel a lot better.”

After a cheeky celebration involving a chainsaw aimed at Labuschagne, Smith fell three balls later.

“I just missed out on happy hour, was time to go playing some shots as Heady just did,” he said.

“Was time to have some fun. I was actually going to start practising a few things, potentially like sweeping and things like that, with our upcoming Indian tour. I know that sounds bad in a way, but felt like it was an opportunity to do that against some good spinners.”

Written with Reuters inputs